N. Korean Defectors Staggered By South, Find Physical, Psychic, Social Hurdles

ANSEONG, South Korea -- To flee North Korea and arrive in the rich, wired, consuming culture of South Korea is to feel clueless, fearful and guilty.

Teenagers are particularly bewildered. As part of the newest wave in a decade-old flow of defectors from the North, they arrive stunted from malnutrition and struggling to read. At the movies for the first time, they panic when the lights go down, afraid someone might kidnap them. They find it incredible that money is stored in plastic credit cards. Pizza, hot dogs and hamburgers -- staples of South Korean teen cuisine -- give them indigestion. One gargled with liquid fabric softener, mistaking it for mouthwash.

In time, they wise up and their stomachs calm down. Their guilt, though, tends to fester.

"When I eat something that is really delicious, I can't help but feel guilty about my family back in North Korea," said Lee J.Y., who asked that her full name not be used because she is afraid that North Korean authorities will punish her family for her freedom. Now 20, Lee escaped five years ago from North Hamgyong province, where her little brother died of hunger and where she survived on cake made of pine-tree bark.

Defectors in the late 1990s were mostly young men without families. They could swim or sneak across the border into China. In recent years, though, about 80 percent of defectors have been middle-aged women, many with children in tow. Most of these women were traders -- and in many cases, cross-border smugglers -- for the private markets that have spread across North Korea. Often, they bribed their way across the border.

They filter into South Korea at the rate of about 35 a week, usually after months or years in China and an arduous detour through Vietnam, Burma or Thailand. About 15,000 defectors have settled in the South, with 4,000 arriving in the past two years.

Seoul does not encourage North Koreans to defect. But once they arrive, the South Korean government quietly grants them citizenship, gives them an apartment and tries to teach them how not to sink in an education-obsessed capitalist culture.

Trust in No One...

Much more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/11/AR2009041100766.html
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Anarcho-Capitalist, ANCAPS Forum, Ancapolis, The Dark Side, Post-Apocalypse, OZschwitz Contraband

Location: Hadal Zone Job/hobbies: State Liquidator

It's a really sad story, with so much needless suffering and death...

All because of that degenerate maggot which rules them...

Nuclear

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Anarcho-Capitalist, ANCAPS Forum, Ancapolis, The Dark Side, Post-Apocalypse, OZschwitz Contraband